In short

• Gender inequality persists in African research systems, especially in leadership and decision-making roles.
• Science granting councils shape research priorities, careers and knowledge production.
• The Gender Equality and Inclusivity project supported councils to integrate gender, equity and intersectionality into funding processes.
• Policy reforms, capacity building and monitoring can advance inclusive grant-making.
• Cultural change and sustained leadership are essential for lasting transformation.

Gender dynamics within research funding systems shape the quality, relevance and impact of the knowledge produced. Science granting councils across Africa have made strides to shift the needle towards more equitable science systems, while acknowledging persistent challenges. This article shares insights from the HSRC’s recently concluded Gender Equality and Inclusivity project, implemented under the Science Granting Councils Initiative. 

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Across Africa and globally, women remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), particularly in senior academic, research leadership and decision-making roles. Although the past decade has seen growth in the number of girls and women entering the STEM pipeline, closing the gender representation gap requires comprehensive interventions and a deeper understanding of how research systems function.  

The research ecosystem is shaped by funding priorities, review processes, definitions of excellence and institutional cultures. Gender equality in science is therefore not only about participation, but also a systemic and funding issue. Science granting councils are powerful actors in this system. They determine which questions are prioritised, which disciplines are resourced, whose expertise is recognised and what knowledge is valued.  

Funding criteria shape career trajectories, institutional prestige and national innovation agendas. When funding systems overlook gendered realities or fail to interrogate bias, they can unintentionally reproduce inequality. On the other hand, when funding is designed with equity and inclusion in mind, it can expand participation and enhance the social relevance and quality of research outcomes.  

It was within this context of challenges that the Gender Equality and Inclusivity (GEI) Project was implemented under the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI). It was led by the Human Sciences Research Council in partnership with Jive Media Africa, members from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and Portia-Gender in Science.  

The project aimed to strengthen how gender, equity, inclusion and intersectionality are embedded across research funding processes. By applying a participatory action learning approach, the project positioned funding bodies as active agents of transformation within Africa’s science, technology and innovation landscape. This approach involved collaboration, peer learning and technical support, while science granting councils identified their own entry points for change. 

Science granting councils as agents of systems change 

Gender mainstreaming can be perceived as a tick-box or compliance exercise in funding and leadership representation. While such measures signal awareness, they do not necessarily transform practices and outcomes. Through the GEI project, councils were encouraged to move beyond gender sensitivity (acknowledging differences and needs), towards more gender-transformative and integrated approaches.  

This entails interrogating how institutional rules, funding criteria, review cultures and power dynamics shape who succeeds in research systems, and actively working to change those structures. Councils were supported to move from their unique starting points, recognising differences in capacity and contexts. No action was considered too small or isolated. A key aspect of this shift was grappling with intersectionality. Broadly, intersectionality recognises that experiences of advantage or exclusion are shaped not by gender alone, but by how gender intersects with race, geography, disability, language, age, socioeconomic status and other dimensions of identity.  

In African research contexts, these intersecting dimensions of identity might mean recognising how a woman researcher at a rural university faces different structural barriers from a woman at a well-resourced urban institution; or how early-career researchers, researchers with disabilities or scholars working in local languages navigate compounded challenges. International models of gender mainstreaming developed largely outside African contexts can fall short if they do not account for layered realities, histories and institutional landscapes.  

A pertinent example from the project is the GEI team from Uganda’s “3-G” approach to gender transformation, which foregrounds gender (number of men and women who receive funds), generation (early-career versus established researchers), and geography (rural and urban institutions).  

Ideas to action 

One key finding from the GEI project’s first cycle (2020–2023) was that experimenting with GEI activities requires time and resources. For this reason, the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) and the National Research Foundation, South Africa, provided funding to support councils in implementing their ideas.  

From 2023 to 2025, the HSRC led a collaborative process of workshops and online sessions to co-develop a call for funding, enabling 12 science granting councils to implement GEI initiatives. Councils reflected on their existing policies and practices, experimented with new approaches, learned from peers, and adapted their strategies over time.  

This iterative process of participatory action, reflection and learning supported context-sensitive and institutionally owned change. The initiatives reflected diverse entry points for strengthening gender equality and inclusivity in research funding. NSTC Zambia, FNI Mozambique, and FONSTI Côte d’Ivoire focused on policy development, embedding GEI and intersectionality into institutional frameworks to ensure sustainability. 

 A second group – COSTECH Tanzania, RCZ Zimbabwe, MEST Ghana, NCST Malawi, NRF Kenya, and FONSTI Côte d’Ivoire – prioritised capacity strengthening through training, awareness, and skills development to build institutional and individual competencies for inclusive grant making.  

Other councils emphasised research-focused initiatives, with UNCST Uganda, MESRI Senegal, FONRID Burkina Faso, NSTC Zambia, and NCRST Namibia undertaking studies to better understand their GEI contexts to inform further action.  

Several councils – including NCST Malawi, COSTECH Tanzania, RCZ Zimbabwe, and FONSTI Côte d’Ivoire – strengthened their monitoring and evaluation systems to track progress, measure impact, and generate evidence for policy refinement. 

Balancing formal and informal change  

While councils have integrated GEI and intersectionality into granting tools and processes, deeply entrenched beliefs can undermine formal reforms. Structural transformation requires sustained, coordinated interventions that engage both the visible and the less visible dimensions of inequality. 

Gender at Work’s analytical framework highlights four interrelated domains of change: consciousness and awareness; access to resources and opportunities; informal cultural norms and deep structures; and formal policies, laws, and institutional arrangements. Feedback at the project’s final learning summit indicated that councils had engaged less with the more challenging task of shifting informal norms, attitudes, and organisational culture.  

It could be that these cultural norms are less tangible and offer fewer clear entry points than policy reform or training programmes. Cultural change may also require time, trust, and collective dialogue. Even beyond the GEI project, bias in peer review, whether conscious or unconscious, remains a concern.  

Norms of “excellence” often privilege uninterrupted publication records and international mobility, overlooking the realities of care responsibilities or career interruptions. Expectations of constant productivity can disadvantage those carrying disproportionate unpaid care work.  

Meanwhile, conversations about power and privilege remain sensitive and are often avoided, limiting scrutiny of whose voices are amplified and whose are sidelined. Without addressing these less visible and complex dimensions of inequality, new policies risk becoming tokenistic.  

Meaningful transformation requires deliberate strategies to challenge stereotypes, foster dialogue, engage allies, and build accountability for culture change, so that reforms translate into lasting systemic progress.  

Sustaining momentum 

The SGCI GEI project demonstrates how small yet impactful steps can shift the needle towards more equitable science funding systems in Africa. Recognising progress is important, but sustained change requires deliberate efforts.  

These include developing clear action plans to translate policy into practice, and strengthening monitoring and learning systems where councils can consolidate and track progress.  

Finally, deeper engagement with research questions, assumptions, and methods is needed to embed gender and intersectional analysis not only in who receives funding, but in what knowledge is produced.  

Leadership also remains crucial. Visible champions of gender-transformative funding at senior institutional and governmental levels can accelerate change and ensure that GEI remains a central priority rather than a peripheral activity. Policies must be backed by resources, political commitment and accountability mechanisms.  

Ultimately, gender equality in science is foundational to building research systems that are credible, relevant and socially responsive – systems capable of unlocking the full potential of Africa’s scientific talent. 

Acknowledgements 

This Review article was written by Lorenza Fluks (senior research specialist) and Pilela Majokweni (chief researcher) in the HSRC’s Research, Development, Science and Innovation (RDSI) division, with contributions to earlier versions of the article by Roshin Essop. 

For more information, please contact Lorenza Fluks at lfluks@hsrc.ac.za 

The authors gratefully acknowledge the science granting councils’ GEI teams for their initiatives and commitment to advancing GEI in grant making. We also acknowledge the following contributors to the SGCI GEI project: Heidi van Rooyen, Ingrid Lynch, Lyn Middleton, Roshin Essop, Nazeema Isaacs, Benelton Jumath, Robert Inglis, Laila Hansrod, Jaqui Hiltermann, Felicité Djoukouo, Irène Kuetche Djembissi, Elizabeth Pollitzer, Lilian Hunt, Dzifa Attah, Palesa Mothapo, Augustine Agugua, Clement Kouadio Kouamé, Sara Naicker, Michael Gastrow and Nompumelelo Zungu. The GEI project formed part of the Science Granting Councils Initiative from 2020 to 2025. The work reported on in this article was part of the 2023–2025 funding cycle and was funded by the International Development Research Centre, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the National Research Foundation (South Africa), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the German Research Foundation, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.